Climate versus carbon dioxide controls on biomass burning: a model analysis of the glacial–interglacial contrast

Autor: Maria Martin Calvo, Sandy P. Harrison, Iain Colin Prentice
Přispěvatelé: Commission of the European Communities
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
DYNAMICS
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
04 Earth Sciences
05 Environmental Sciences
lcsh:Life
Climate change
Biomass
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
BIOSPHERE
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
7. Clean energy
01 natural sciences
GLOBAL VEGETATION MODEL
chemistry.chemical_compound
lcsh:QH540-549.5
ECOSYSTEMS
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Ecosystem
Glacial period
Geosciences
Multidisciplinary
Ecology
Evolution
Behavior and Systematics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
MAXIMUM
Science & Technology
Ecology
WILDFIRE
Global warming
lcsh:QE1-996.5
FIRE REGIMES
Biosphere
Geology
06 Biological Sciences
15. Life on land
Dynamic global vegetation model
SIMULATIONS
lcsh:Geology
lcsh:QH501-531
chemistry
13. Climate action
Climatology
Physical Sciences
Carbon dioxide
Environmental science
CO2
lcsh:Ecology
ICE-AGE
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Zdroj: Biogeosciences, Vol 11, Iss 21, Pp 6017-6027 (2014)
ISSN: 1726-4189
1726-4170
Popis: Climate controls fire regimes through its influence on the amount and types of fuel present and their dryness. CO2 concentration constrains primary production by limiting photosynthetic activity in plants. However, although fuel accumulation depends on biomass production, and hence on CO2 concentration, the quantitative relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and biomass burning is not well understood. Here a fire-enabled dynamic global vegetation model (the Land surface Processes and eXchanges model, LPX) is used to attribute glacial–interglacial changes in biomass burning to an increase in CO2, which would be expected to increase primary production and therefore fuel loads even in the absence of climate change, vs. climate change effects. Four general circulation models provided last glacial maximum (LGM) climate anomalies – that is, differences from the pre-industrial (PI) control climate – from the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase~2, allowing the construction of four scenarios for LGM climate. Modelled carbon fluxes from biomass burning were corrected for the model's observed prediction biases in contemporary regional average values for biomes. With LGM climate and low CO2 (185 ppm) effects included, the modelled global flux at the LGM was in the range of 1.0–1.4 Pg C year-1, about a third less than that modelled for PI time. LGM climate with pre-industrial CO2 (280 ppm) yielded unrealistic results, with global biomass burning fluxes similar to or even greater than in the pre-industrial climate. It is inferred that a substantial part of the increase in biomass burning after the LGM must be attributed to the effect of increasing CO2 concentration on primary production and fuel load. Today, by analogy, both rising CO2 and global warming must be considered as risk factors for increasing biomass burning. Both effects need to be included in models to project future fire risks.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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